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The Borgherini Enigma Page: 48 / 179Finally, the horse-drivers shouted the call to advance and the platform set in motion. Beforethe horses marched heralds clad in fierce red, flaming tones. These blew on their long, cuppertrumpets with high-pitched, shrill sounds, to announce the reign of the Fates. The horses drewat the platform with a sudden shock. The Fates almost fell on their bottoms, Zeus swayed toleft and right, and the entire Greek temple reeled over, threatening to capsize any moment.Granacci’s columns and triangular tympanum held however, and the Chariot of the Fates ofSanta Maria Novella moved slowly towards the Duomo.A group of drummers followed the Fates, then a group of gonfalon-swingers, a large group offemale dancers. Another group of Greek warriors, dressed in full bronze hoplite panoply,closed the long presentation. Pierfrancesco and Margherita laughed their heads off at Jupiter,let his companions pass, and then strolled on.They sauntered through almost every street of the city, along the Lungarnoes of the RiverArno, over the bridges to the Altr’Arno wards, to the Pitti palace, back over the PonteVecchio to the city centre and the Signoria, to the area of Piazza Santa Croce, where manychariots gathered, back to the Duomo, to the Mercato Vecchio and back to the Signoria. Theymocked masked people and masks insulted them. When they remarked Acciaiuoli orBorgherini colours, the pink roses on a yellow band of the Borgherini or the red rampant lionof the Acciaiuoli, they closed their cloaks and ran laughing wildly into side-alleys. In cloaksthey entered taverns to drink cups of spiced wine, Pierfrancesco holding his love at the waist.They ate sweetmeats and roasts at stalls in the piazzas, cakes and pastries in the streets.Pierfrancesco was still suspicious. Several times, in various places, he looked around, andmemorised the masks he saw. It seemed to him at least three of the masks were at streetcorners, in archways or at tavern entrances, at every place he went, but he couldn’t be sure themasks were exactly the same. He convinced himself he was only imagining things, inventingstories that were not, and brushed the suspicions from his mind.The quarter of Santa Maria Novella had built the Fates of Granacci and the Bacchanals ofBachiacca. The Bacchanals, built by the wards of Leon Rosso and Vipera, was a chariot thatheld only women, not one man was on it. Pierfrancesco and Margherita wondered whereBachiacca hid, unless he too was dressed as a woman. It was a wonderful chariot withpainted, high arches that intersected all over the platform, decorated with panels of flowergarlands and bunches of grapes. The women were Bacchantes, but there was no Bacchus onthe chariot. Bachiacca had had the splendid idea to put several huge barrels of wine on hisplatform. The masked Bacchantes that stepped along distributed as much wine as one coulddrink. The combination of beautiful girls as Bacchantes and free wine was irresistible! Hordesof the poorer people accompanied this group throughout the town.The quarter of San Giovanni also presented two chariots, one constructed by the wards ofLeon d’Oro and Drago, the other by the wards of Vaio and Chiavi. The first was a winterchariot, the second a summer chariot. Santa Croce moved only one platform, but a very longone, representing the Ages of Man, from birth to youth, manhood, middle age and old age,nicely staged with couples of these ages. The groups showed at times separated, then dancedand jumped together on the chariot in a merry-go-round. The Altr’Arno district of SantoSpirito took pride in two chariots. The wards of Drago and Ferza there represented thecontinents, among which the newly discovered Terra Incognita, the new lands of the west.The wards of Nicchio and Scala had made a chariot with a scene of Roman history, anCopyright © René Dewil Version 2 Number of words: 108230 July 2009
The Borgherini Enigma Page: 49 / 179allegory on the founding of Florence by a Roman officer of Julius Caesar. In all, elevenplatforms circled in Florence, passed bridges and returned.Finally, as evening fell, four chariots assembled in the Piazza della Signoria, two in theMercato Vecchio, three in the Piazza Santa Croce, whereas the two remaining ones positionedalong the Arno near the Ponte Vecchio. There, all the men and women that accompanied thewagons made music together and danced.Darkness set in. Evening came. Margherita’s time to return home had come. She would haveto return soon to the Borgo Santi Apostoli. Pierfrancesco also dared not taunt RobertoAcciaiuoli beyond the father’s last grain of patience. Yet, he could not bring back Margheritabefore having seen at least for a few moments the apotheosis of Carnival, the most formidablechariot ever built in Florence, Piero di Cosimo’s chariot. This platform had equally been builtin the Hall of the Popes of the Monastery of Santa Maria Novella. Ever since Piero di Cosimo,a very eccentric painter, had devised that chariot for the first time, it had been the sensation ofFlorence, and now it was taken through the streets every year as the culmination of theprocession, with magnificent success. Pierfrancesco had already seen it the years before, butthis would be Margherita’s first time. It had to be admired in the last light of the day formaximum effect. Pierfrancesco and Margherita hurried to Santa Maria Novella anew. Theywere just in time to watch the Hall of the Popes open. Forward rattled the Coach of Death.The groups that accompanied the chariot assembled in the piazza. The large platform wasdrawn by ten black buffaloes, caparisoned with long, black pieces of draped cloth painted allover with large, white human bones and crosses. Alongside the buffaloes marched at leastfifty men dressed entirely in black, holding torches. On their tight dresses were painted inglistening white the bones of a human skeleton, on their arms, breasts and legs, so that in thedarkness it seemed an army of the dead marched. The men wore masks of human skulls,equally in white on black. The same skeletons were painted on their backs, so that also whenseen passing it was as if the skeletons marched on Florence.The chariot was painted entirely in black, too. It represented a gruesome landscape of rockson which lay a series of tombs and a large number of coffins. This was Ezekiel’s vision of theruins, covered with tombs, in the Valley of the Bones. Over the tombs stood a huge figure ofDeath, a skeleton, brandishing its scythe. Death was a sculpture of plaster and wood, but thescythe moved and made circular movements in the air, towering high above the crowd.Suddenly, horse-riders clattered on the cobblestones from a side-street. They joined the groupthat formed. The horses were a pity to see, for they were the most broken-down, old, famishedanimals of the poorest quarters of the town, chosen specifically for their ugliness, more thanfifty of them. On each horse sat a rider, clad in black and painted over in white as a skeleton,wearing a black skull mask, holding a long torch. The horses wore black trappings, and whitecrosses were painted on these. A group of men advanced, all dressed as skeletons. Two heldthe reins of each horse in one hand, a torch in the other. These grooms guided the horsesthrough the streets.Then, ten more horse-riders arrived, each wearing black gonfalons, which showed whiteskulls as badges. These rode behind the wagon. Alongside the chariot now stepped heralds,black and white skeletons too, holding trumpets muffled at the end by black rags. Lastly, agreat black standard, with a white skull painted on it, was brought forward and that standardplaced itself in front of the groups. About fifty monks of the Monasteries of San Marco andSan Gallo positioned themselves in a double row behind the black standard. All the monkswore torches.Copyright © René Dewil Version 2 Number of words: 108230 July 2009
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